ISN WG minutes - Seattle IETF

[Joyce Reynolds <[e-mail]>]

        IETF Internet School Networking Working Group (ISN-WG) Minutes
                             Seattle, Washington


29th IETF
Internet School Networking Working Group (ISN-WG)
Meeting 30 March 1994 9:30 a.m. -- 12 noon
Joyce K. Reynolds and John Clement, acting co-chairs

There were 50 participants.  The roster was circulated.  Participants
present at the start of the meeting introduced themselves.


1.  Review of charter, milestones, current documents and activities.

Joyce Reynolds reviewed the charter and summarized milestones for
March and July 1994.  Activities are on time for this and the next
IETF.

A new Request for Comments (RFC) is now available, produced by
Jennifer Sellers:

FYI 22:
RFC 1578:
Title:          FYI on Questions and Answers -- Answers to Commonly Asked
                "Primary and Secondary School Internet User" Questions
Author:         J. Sellers
Mailbox:        [e-mail]
Pages:          53
Characters:     113,646
Updates/Obsoletes:   none

A new Internet-Draft (I-D) is available from the on-line
Internet-Drafts directories:

Title:          K-12 Internetworking Guidelines
Author(s):      J. Gargano, D. Wasley
Pages:          20
Date:           2/25/1994


2.  Status report on ISN task: "Define the information to be included
in an online database of educational people involved in networking,
recommend a process for collecting and updating the data, and
coordinate with a directory services provider to implement the
database."

April Marine reported on activities in this task.  The volunteers
(Sallie Fellows, Sally Laughon, April Marine) had agreed that this was
a "white pages" task; they scouted for resources, and located Sally
Laughon's collection of teacher profiles derived from subscribers to
the KIDSPHERE mailing list.

A preliminary list of data items for the database was offered for
discussion.  It included:

Name:                   Postal Address:         Email Address(es):
Phone Number(s):        Fax Number:             Title/function:
Name of school:         Location of school:     Ages of children taught:
Subjects taught:

In discussion, it was suggested that a free field for interests and/or
one for projects in which the educator was involved be included.

A preliminary list of requirements for the database was also
presented:

a.  Collect and maintain data, including periodic reverification.
b.  Provide an easy, automatic method for self-registration.
c.  Provide an easy, automatic method for database registrants to
    update their information.
d.  Provide for authentication and for maintaining privacy of certain
    information.
e.  Provide an easy search interface.

Questions were raised about the feasibility of items b. and c.  There
is an RFC out on privacy concerns and NIC operations (Holbrook, P.,
and J. Reynolds, Editors, "Site Security Handbook", FYI 8, RFC 1244,
CICNet, ISI, July 1991).  Basic issues relevant to the educators
database are that, if you enroll a person they should know and agree
to it, they should know how to be taken off (if it is possible), and
they should know how to alter their entry.

It was mentioned that a project to implement a distributed database for
school people using the Whois++ protocol is under consideration by CNIDR
and collaborators.  CNIDR will share information on this project on the
ISN-WG mailing list as it gets underway.  Sepideh Boroumand of
NASA-Goddard, Jill Hanson of WSIPC, Allan Cargille of U-Wisconsin-Madison
and Brian Lloyd of Lloyd Internetworking offered to help by collecting
information on schools for whom they support connectivity.

Next steps discussed were to prepare a writeup of the database
requirements and data elements, and to discuss with CNIDR the collection
of data and the establishment of a prototype database.  It does not seem
likely at this point that a prototype will be available for testing and
discussion by 30th IETF in July.


3.  Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) document.

Bill Manning presented the draft document that Don Perkins and he had
developed and circulated on the ISN-WG mailing list.  It was emphasized
that the document was envisioned as a guide for schools, districts or
other educational network providers to develop their own AUPs, but was
not itself an AUP statement.

A discussion ensued about the need for specific examples of AUPs to be
made available.  It was suggested that the AUP for the CoVis project
(Louis Gomez and Roy Pea, Northwestern University), which includes
considerable explanatory material, be appended to the draft document.
The Armadillo gopher (gopher: riceinfogopher.rice.edu (port 1170))
contains a number of AUPs; it was suggested that pointers to school
and educational network provider AUPs be included in the document.  It
was mentioned that legal counsel for school districts often review
proposed AUPs, so these documents will almost invariably be
customized.

It was mentioned that the question of teaching the users about the AUP
often comes up.  Bill Manning offered to revise the draft document to
add pointers to model AUPs, to include the CoVis AUP as an example in
an appendix, and to include information about user training.  The
working group accepted the document as revised as an Internet-Draft.
[Note: This I-D has just been posted to the Internet-Drafts
repositories on 5 April: draft-ietf-isn-aup-00.txt.]


4.  Status report on ISN task: "Write a set of two documents, one
aimed at connection providers and the other aimed at educational
sites, providing guidelines for bringing educational sites online.
Included will be a broad definition of connection providers.

Avri Doria presented an outline of an educational user document.  The
volunteers (Ann Cooper, Avri Doria, Dave Livingston) suggested that
the document would take the form of an annotated bibliography of about
ten pages in length, with short entries for each item.  The outline
includes:

a.  What is the Internet?
b.  What types of services are available to educators?
c.  What types of physical connections are available?
d.  Where would one go to get connected?
e.  What is involved in getting hooked up?
f.  What are school personnel responsibilities?
g.  What forms of training and support are needed?
h.  What issues of "netiquette" are involved?
i.  Glossary.
j.  Bibliography.
k.  Useful addresses and phone numbers.

It was pointed out that the document outlined would inevitably be
larger than ten pages; there was some uncertainty expressed about
whether the proposed format would work.  Avri Doria requested more
volunteers to help identify gaps in the outline, to review the
document, and to identify resources to cite in the document.  Sepideh
Boroumand, Jill Hanson, Brian Lloyd and April Marine volunteered.  It
was agreed that the outline would be posted to the list and developed
further, for discussion at the 30th IETF in Toronto.

A discussion ensued on the need for a document oriented toward network
service providers.  It was suggested that service provider
representatives should volunteer to work on the document.  The group
agreed to postpone discussion of a document oriented to service
providers for the next IETF.

Gene Hastings presented a document authored by himself and Bob
Carlitz, "Stages of Internet Connectivity for School Networking," and
distributed copies.  The group agreed that the document should be put
online as an Internet-Draft.  Gene Hastings and Joyce Reynolds will
work on getting author approval, etc., and to proceed to publish this
document as an I-D.  The question was raised of making documents
available via fax; Susan Calcari said the InterNIC is considering
establishing a fax-based distribution system.


5.  Discussion of the Gargano-Wasley (G-W) Internet-Draft.

Questions raised included:

o  Is the document too closely oriented toward system administrators?

It was suggested that the target audience for this document is really
educational administrators, with the document aiming to explain in
clear, predominantly nontechnical language what connectivity options
they have.  It was emphasized that some 30 California educators have
examined the draft prior to its posting, and they helped determine the
technical level.

o  Is there overlap between the G-W draft and the Carlitz-Hastings
   (C-H) draft?

It was suggested that both were complementary; the C-H draft goes into
greater technical depth, while the G-W draft document focuses more
closely on the internal requirements of schools.

Other issues were briefly discussed.  It was noted to the authors of
the G-W document that Frame Relay was not mentioned in the I-D.  The
draft will be revised and reissued by David Wasley to include a
discussion of Frame Relay.  The G-W document will not include training
and support information; it was suggested that those issues be
discussed in another document.

It was agreed by the working group that the Gargano-Wasley would be
submitted for FYI RFC publication.